How much does a movie script cost to buy?

From a Writers Guild signatory, a high-budget theatrical original screenplay cannot be bought below $125,023 excluding treatment, per the guild's published Year 3 schedule — and the market median for a comparable first-draft deal is about $450,000. Outside the guild there is no floor: freelance features start around $5,000.

What is the WGA minimum for a screenplay in 2026?

The 2026 MBA was ratified in April 2026 and raises minimums 1.5% from 2 May 2026, but the guild has not published a dollar schedule for it yet. The last published figures are the 2023 MBA Year 3 column. The one exception is the new page-one rewrite category, published at $57,500 high budget and $31,500 low budget.

How much does a short film script cost?

There is no reliable published figure, and the circulating ranges all trace back to each other. What is verifiable: the WGA sets no minimum for original short-form work at all, and the adjacent published rates are $1,000–$1,800 for a 30 or 60-second commercial script and $500–$1,500 for a one-to-five minute online video script.

How long does writing a screenplay take?

The contractual norm for a feature first draft is about twelve weeks, and the current MBA has a related pressure point: a writer at or below 200% of minimum who has not delivered within nine weeks is owed an accelerated payment. Freelance ghostwriting typically quotes three to six months, with rush at a premium.

Is script coverage worth paying for before commissioning?

It is the cheapest professional read you can buy — $89 to $185 for standard feature coverage, $349 to $449 for in-depth notes, generally within two weeks. Against a $5,000 freelance script or a $450,000 studio deal, it is a rounding error, which is why it is usually the first money spent.

How Much Does a Movie Script Cost

How much a movie script costs depends entirely on who is buying. A Writers Guild signatory has a legal floor in six figures; a freelance ghostwriter starts around $5,000; a 30-second commercial script is four figures. Here is each band with its source.

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The guild sets a floor, not a price

A WGA signatory cannot legally pay below the Schedule of Minimums. That floor is six figures for a theatrical feature — and the market median for the same work is two-and-a-half to four times it.

Outside the guild there is no floor at all

Freelance and ghostwriting rates run from about $5,000 for a feature to well past $50,000, set entirely by who you hire. Every published rate card in this band belongs to somebody selling the service.

Short-form sits outside the guild entirely

The WGA sets no minimum for an original short-form or new-media script — compensation is fully negotiable. Only derivative new media has a floor, and it is measured in hundreds, not thousands.

Writers Guild minimums for a theatrical feature

These are the figures the WGA has actually published: the 2023 MBA Year 3 column, effective 2 May 2025 to 1 May 2026. The 2026 MBA was ratified on 24 April 2026 and raises minimums 1.5% from 2 May 2026, but the guild has not yet published a dollar schedule for it — so the derived column is arithmetic, not an official figure. The high/low budget line is drawn at $5,000,000.

Category	High budget (published)	High (+1.5%, derived)	Low budget (published)
Original screenplay, including treatment	$170,655	~$173,215	$90,904
Original screenplay, excluding treatment	$125,023	~$126,898	$61,064
Non-original screenplay, incl. treatment	$147,920	~$150,139	$79,542
Original story or treatment	$68,205	~$69,228	$41,188
Rewrite	$45,470	~$46,152	$29,826
Polish	$22,736	~$23,077	$14,924
Page-one rewrite (new in 2026 MBA)	$57,500	published figure	$31,500

The page-one rewrite is the one genuinely 2026 dollar figure published so far, and it only applies if the contract uses that term. Note also the guaranteed second step: hire a writer for a first draft at up to 200% of minimum and the company must also pay for a rewrite at no less than the rewrite minimum.

What the market actually pays

From the WGA's own Screen Compensation Guide (2025 edition), built on roughly 800 high-budget feature deals made under the 2023 MBA. These are employment deals rather than spec purchases — the guild does not publish spec-sale medians, and anyone quoting one is guessing.

Deal type	Median, all companies	Median, major studios	Highest reported
One-step first draft	$450,000	$500,000	$2,250,000
Multi-step first draft	$375,000	$550,000	$3,850,000
One-step rewrite	$200,000	$250,000	$1,000,000
First draft, writer with no credits	$300,000	—	—
First draft, writer with 2+ credits	$600,000	—	—

The headline comparison: the median one-step first draft ($450,000) is roughly three and a half times the published minimum for an original screenplay excluding treatment ($125,023). The floor is a floor, not a going rate.

Freelance and short-form, where most people actually are

Everything in this band comes from vendors publishing their own rate cards, which is worth weighing — nobody neutral surveys screenwriting rates. The Editorial Freelancers Association ran the closest thing to a neutral survey over winter 2025-26 and has no screenwriting category at all.

Item	Price	Typical turnaround
Feature ghostwriting, per page	from $60/page — about $7,200 for 120 pages	3–6 months
Feature ghostwriting, milestone package	from $5,000, billed by draft	1–6 months, rush costs more
Feature, mid-tier freelance	$7,000–$15,000	10–12 weeks to a first draft
30 or 60-second commercial script	$1,000–$1,800	days
Short online video script (1–5 min)	$500–$1,500+	days
Explainer script, 30–90 seconds	from $500 flat	about a week
Script coverage, feature	$89–$185 standard, $349–$449 in depth	5–14 days
One-hour consultancy call	$149–$299	scheduled

Rush pricing is real and steep — one ghostwriting service states plainly that rapid turnaround doubles the price. Note also that the coverage market consolidated hard in 2025: Coverfly, WeScreenplay and ScreenCraft coverage all shut down.

Where the money actually goes

The reason this question is asked so often by people who then do not commission a script is that the script is rarely the expensive part. A high-budget feature that pays $450,000 for a first draft is paying that against a production budget north of $5,000,000 — the writing is single-digit percentage points of it.

At the other end, the same asymmetry bites harder. If you are making a short, a $5,000 ghostwritten script is a very large fraction of what you will spend, and the thing that decides whether it was worth it is whether you shoot it. Most commissioned short scripts are not shot.

Which is the honest case for drafting first and paying later. A script that exists, in rough form, tells you whether the idea holds — and if it does, that is a much better brief to hand a professional writer than a paragraph of intent.

Reelfo's story stage will write a premise, a beat structure and a script from a one-line brief, and it is text, so iterating on it costs almost nothing next to rendering. It is not a substitute for a writer at any of the price bands above and it would be dishonest to sell it as one. What it is good for is finding out, cheaply, whether the thing is worth commissioning — and then storyboarding and rendering it if it is.

Signing up puts 100 credits in your account, once, with no card. That is enough for the script, character and shot-list stages plus about one keyframe — it is a look at the pipeline, not a free finished reel.

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Sources

Third-party prices and limits below were read off each vendor’s own page on the date shown. Vendors change plans without notice — if a number here disagrees with what you see, the vendor’s page wins and we want to hear about it.

WGA — 2023 Schedule of Minimums, Year 3 (theatrical)checked 2026-07-28
WGA — 2026 MBA Memorandum of Agreement (increases, page-one rewrite)checked 2026-07-28
WGA — Screen Compensation Guide (market medians)checked 2026-07-28
WGA — Schedule of Minimums indexchecked 2026-07-28
AWAI — 2026 Copywriting Pricing Guide (commercial and video scripts)checked 2026-07-28
Script Reader Pro — coverage and consultancy pricingchecked 2026-07-28
Coverage Ink — service feeschecked 2026-07-28
WriteMovies — screenplay ghostwriting packageschecked 2026-07-28

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